Thursday, March 17, 2016

Selling Assisted Suicide

CBS’s “60 Minutes” and the Selling of Physician-Assisted Suicide

In
the March 13, 2016, 60 Minutes segment titled “Aid in Dying” (re-titled
“Should the terminally ill control how they die?” in the online
transcript), the vaunted investigative news show crossed the line from
presenting facts to enthusiastic advocacy.
The stage was set when medical correspondent Dr. John LaPook, an
internist and son-in-law of liberal activist Norman Lear, opened the
segment by stating:

This is not euthanasia, when a doctor
gives a patient a lethal injection. That’s illegal in all 50 states.
Aid-in-dying, or what opponents call “assisted suicide”
and supporters call “death with dignity,” relies on people taking the
medication themselves. Oregon became the first state to legalize it 18
years ago, but because a nurse or doctor is rarely present, it’s
remained mostly a private affair, practiced behind closed doors. We
wanted to hear from patients and family members who’ve experienced it
and are fighting to make it legal nationwide. (Emphasis added.)

If you click on the link for the transcript, you will also see “related videos” with segment extras not included on the TV show.
One titled “ethical concerns” is an interview with Dr. Katrina
Hedberg, state epidemiologist of the Oregon Public Health Division, to
discuss “ethical concerns raised by her state sanctioning aid-in-dying.”
Not surprisingly, Dr. Hedberg strenuously denies that assisted
suicide is a danger for the “disenfranchised” or done for medical
economic or family burden reasons. Instead, she says “the opposite has
happened” despite cases like Barbara Wagner’s.
In the segment extra “How does the medicine work?,” the assisted
suicide doctor explains that the medicine simply just “shuts off the
brain” starting “at the top” where consciousness is and then goes to
“the bottom” of the brain where heartbeat and breathing occur. Not a
very accurate or scientific explanation but designed to reassure the
public.
In the televised segment, there was only a very short interview with
Dr. William Toffler, National Director of Physicians for Compassionate
Care. He is identified by Dr. LaPook only as a doctor “who’s taken care
of terminally ill patients for 40 years” and whose wife died of cancer
in comfort and without physician-assisted suicide. Dr. Toffler’s
practical and ethical concerns were ignored or dismissed by Dr. LaPook.
The rest of the segment involved interviews with people fighting for
physician-assisted suicide for themselves or a relative and an assisted
suicide doctor. The usual lethal overdose drug and the method for using
it for suicide were described in detail.
A major portion of the segment were interviews with Dan Diaz,
Brittany Maynard’s husband, and Dr. Eric Walsh, the Oregon physician who
prescribed the overdose for the 29-year-old woman with a glioblastoma
brain tumor whose countdown to assisted suicide became a media sensation
in October, 2014.
Brittany’s suicide was described by her husband as Brittany just
going to sleep and slowly stopping to breathe. Not surprisingly, it was
after Brittany’s suicide that most mainstream media then changed the
usual term “physician-assisted suicide” to softer terms like “aid in
dying” or “physician-assisted death”.
Ironically, 60 Minutes aired a segment on March 29, 2015
(just 5 months after Brittany Maynard took her lethal overdose), titled
“Killing Cancer” The segment followed patients in a year-long clinical
trial who had glioblastoma brain cancers like Brittany’s. Many of these
patients saw their cancers disappear after being treated with a
reengineered polio virus. This was touted as a great breakthrough by 60 Minutes but went unmentioned in this segment.
Another interview was with a man in hospice who was being seen by Dr. Walsh but, as the segment stated:

Though usually extremely effective at
keeping people comfortable, in rare instances, standard hospice care
doesn’t work well enough. In those cases, Dr. Walsh says, one option is
something called palliative sedation.

Dr. Eric Walsh: When the physician
decides that suffering is intolerable, the physician prescribes a
medication which puts the patient in a coma…The nurse administers it.
It’s given until the person is asleep. The person sleeps for three days,
five days. I’ve had someone live 10 days, still excreting, still
breathing, with the family at the bedside wondering, “When is this going
to end?”

When an assisted suicide doctor himself “decides that suffering is
intolerable,” prescribes an intravenous continuous medication to be
administered by a nurse to speed a patient’s death, how is that not euthanasia?
Sadly, the last interview with a woman dying of colon cancer
illustrates the dangers of assisted suicide for so-called “altruistic”
reasons that would also appeal to many non-terminally ill but
debilitated or suicidal people:

Dr. Jon LaPook: And it sounds like from what you’re saying your decision to perhaps take the medication will be a final act

Elizabeth Wallner: Absolutely.

Dr. Jon LaPook: –of protecting your son.

Elizabeth Wallner: Absolutely. I just want him to remember me laughing and, you know, giving him a hard time, and telling him to brush his teeth, and knowing that I would– I would, you know, walk across the sun for him. (Emphasis added)

The public deserves a better and more comprehensive discussion about
physician-assisted suicide. Such discussions have been occurring in
state legislatures where physician-assisted suicide groups like
Compassion and Choices relentlessly push for legalization and medical,
disability, pro-life and other groups testify to the real facts and
dangers.
There must be something to this opposition since so far this year
numerous states have rejected physician-assisted suicide bills.Editor’s note. This appeared on Nancy’s blog.